Evolution the foundation

In regard to U.S. Rep. Randy Hultgren’s commentary about Common Core Standards and STEM education, recalling a 2010 interview on TLN:

Question: “Do you believe in evolution and do you believe it should be taught in our public schools?”

Hultgren: “I believe in intelligent design and that we are created. I believe strongly in that. I do believe in local control of our school districts.”

Then he goes on to talk about failing schools.

Evolution is now the foundation of high school AP Biology – since 99.8 percent of the world’s life scientists agree with Russian biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, who said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.”

In 2005, a conservative Christian judge ruled that teaching intelligent design in the Dover, Pa., public schools violated the First Amendment since intelligent design “cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.”

At the Dover trial, Kenneth Miller, a Christian biologist, said, “Modern genetics and molecular biology support evolution in great detail, and the closer we can get to looking at the detail of the human genome, the more powerful and convincing the evidence has become. ... Not a single observation, not a single experimental result has ever emerged in 150 years that contradicts the general outlines of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Any theory that can stand up to 150 years of contentious testing is a pretty darn good theory – that’s what evolution is.”

Miller was a speaker at evangelical Wheaton College’s evolution symposium in 1997.